ah psalm 8, what a beautiful psalm, this is a classic…

this is a sunset psalm, a lightning storm psalm, this is table mountain or niagra falls psalm…

it starts and ends with this sense of this person who has just caught a glimpse of this amazing, powerful, awesome, holy, just plain BIG God and as a result he bursts forth in praise:

‘LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth! You have set Your glory in the heavens.’ [vs.1]

and finishes with:

‘LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!’ [vs.9]

this is an absolute response psalm and a great reminder of the place our prayers should come from.

now the reality is that we do not always feel like this and i believe God wants us to be open and honest and real and be able to pray to Him at those times when we are brought low and just struggling to even believe He exists or cares… and those prayers may not start off sounding like this one… but for those times when we are reminded, when we take some time to be still and know once again that He is God [psalm 46.10], that He will not give His glory to another [isaiah 42.8], when we for a moment remove our eyes from the mirror, or from looking at ourselves, our issues, our worries, our achievements, our needs, our relationships… and just lift them to Him…

we can’t but help respond in this way as well – O Lord, how magnificent You are, how awesome is Your name…

and then what follows, once we realise that this very same huge universe-creating, mind-blowing God has for some insane-to-us reason decided to involve and include and entrust us with His plans…

‘When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? [vs3-4]’

this is a rhetorical question demanding the understood answer of “exactly! who are we?’ it is a complete reflection of Who God is, rather than who we are. and yet, for some reason, He still reaches out and invites us.

this is a reminder to me to have those days of just absolutely immersing myself in the knowledge and experience and history and reality of Who God is and just responding in worship…

[To continue to Psalm 9, click here]

[To return to the start of this series on Psalms as well as some other Bible things, click here]